Technology Integration in Central Maine

Busy as a bee? Busy as a beaver? How about busy as a teacher? Meeting the demands that are placed on today’s classroom teacher are nearly impossible given there are only 24 hours in each day. Teachers need lessons that align to standards, meet the needs of diverse learners, and fit in with the culture of the classroom and school. There are several databases of lessons that allow teachers to search based on multiple factors including content, type of activity, and length of lesson. Let’s look at the interface for four of these sites.

6. eThemes – My first choice for finding online resources!! These resources are age appropriate, the content has been checked for accuracy, and the pages have been checked three links deep. You can also request to have an eTheme created for your specific topic.

Why is this an important question? The question for teachers is no longer should I have a web presence, but what type of web presence should I have. A blog is a website, but it’s a special kind. Blogs are more dynamic versus a static web site, they are updated often and allow for comments from readers. Information on the blog is arranged in a chronological order – with the latest entry at the beginning of the page. Most blog entries are tagged so that they are easily searchable.

Blogs and websites can have links, images, and multimedia files embedded, in this way they are similar. They can also both be “followed” via an RSS feed. I have compiled a few articles for you to peruse about blogs and websites. Funny enough, some of them are blogs and some are websites.

Being a Google Apps for Education school gives us many opportunities for engaging our student with collaboration. Google Docs/Drive is a good place to start. Think of it as a large filing cabinet in which you store files of any type, documents, presentations, images, videos, etc. You can organize these files many different ways – that’s one of the beautiful thing about electronic files. One file may show up in several different folders, depending on the content.

Sharing Docs with students makes for fewer trips to the copier, and reduces the “I lost it” excuses. You can choose to share docs that students can’t edit, such as classroom expectations, or you can share templates that you want students to work on and hand back in to you. In this case the students would need to make a copy, usually renaming it to include their name, and work on the copy. Then they simply share the copy with you and you both have access to the student work. Another way to do this, is to have the students create the document (presentation, spreadsheet, drawing, etc.) and have them share it with you. Here’s a short video on sharing documents with students.
Commenting on student work can be done in several ways in Google drive. The comment button that shows up when you have been given permission to comment tucks the comments on the side of the page, in relation to where the cursor is in the document at the time you are commenting. For instance, if you want to give a student information about a particular sentence, you can highlight that sentence and then hit the comment button. That tells the student exactly where your comment belongs in the document. You can also comment directly in the paper, if you have been given editing privileges. This is usually best done in an alternative color for visibility.
Google Forms gives you the ability to ask different types of questions and collect responses. You can find the Google Help menu for forms here. Click here to download a text tutorial with screenshots. Here is a video tutorial on using forms in Google drive:
For the more advanced users of forms that want to create self grading forms check out this video. Enjoy using Forms – so many uses so little time!!

Have you seen the current model for tech integration for Mt. Blue RSD? How can we manage these and get our students to meet our curriculum standards too? The answer is in the question. We want the best of both worlds – and that’s the idea behind technology integration. Here are some sites to get you started with meeting the common core using technology –

Gail Holmes matches online tools with CCSS standards in this wiki. Each subject area and grade level are represented in this resourceful web site.

A Guide to Aligning the Common Core State Standards with the Framework for 21st Century Skills – 48 page PDF, with great examples of lessons that meet both sets of standards.

Woodstock Schools K-5 Framework for Integrating Technology. Activities and Links matched to CCSS – includes list of equipment needed and different levels of integration example lessons.

50 Ways to use a Document Camera in your classroom! Learn about the Point 2 View Document Camera here.

What is a Bamboo Slate and why would I want one? Read this blog post to find the answer.

We want our students to become lifelong learners, and we need to model this for them. Remember that the web is not a static entity. Having said that – Google Docs turns into Google Drive – what’s up with that? Some things we have no control over.

Here’s a short video to help ease the transition.

Since we’re on the topic of Google Docs, did you know there are templates out there? Why recreate the wheel?

Here’s a couple of lesson plans using some of the Google Apps. This is a relatively new site and should continue to expand.

Here is a smattering of communication/collaboration tools that we will review with you. The session is only an hour long, so we will be moving pretty fast. Follow along with the links below, or sit back, take notes, and check out the links later – your choice. Comment below to let us know what resonated with you so that we can delve deeper into that part in a future session! Enjoy….